BONUS LEVEL 4 - OVERLOOTING>MENU

The real Monty Haul was the friends we made along the way

Overlooting is a turn-based dungeon crawler, where the player controls a hero and combats them through a gauntlet of three levels until reaching the final boss/s. Gameplay is simplistic, there is but one action the player can take and that is ATTACK. Despite their lack of actions, the player does have lots of choice for how they ATTACK. Don't get me wrong, there is only one ATTACK command and that is click but this ATTACK will be different based on the choices the player has made outside of combat. Firstly, the player gets to choose a new skill per level, in addition to the 3 passive skills each character starts with. The starter character, Maximillian, is the beginner's friend - starting with extra health and healing, even a full revive when he first dies. His unlockable skills are similarly warrior-coded, 'The Protagonist' gives him 80 armor but enemies ATTACK an extra time on their turn, 'Quick Repair' gives him a 25% chance to upgrade an item when picking it up, and 'Shieldmaster' gives him additonal ATTACK equal to his base armor stat. The cool thing is that each character has a pool of bonus skills that are randomly selected at the start of a run, meaning that each run will never quite have the same combination of skills to choose from. Considering that almost all of these skills are really strong and strategy-defining, this really does make each run feel unique. i feel like i've seen this approach in other games before but the skills haven't quite been interesting enough to actually make each new run feel that much different. There's also no clear 'best' option to go for each time, as it depends heavily on your build and what equipment you get...

...which is the main way of boosting your stats in Overlooting. You have 7 equipment slots, 3 for armour (helmet, chestplate, shoes) 2 for trinkets (ring and amulet) and 2 for weapons/shields. These have mundane stats like armour (damage taken before your health) and ATTACK (damage dealt when you ATTACK), but also more exotic qualities like manaburst (chance to deal your magic damage to a random enemy when ATTACKing) and swiftness (chance to ATTACK an extra time when ATTACKing). Gamers (you) will equip better and better loot as they go through the game's levels, hopefully becoming machines of death in the process. But the effects don't just stop at stats, each item also have a class it belongs to. Equipping a certain number of items from the same class will grant powerful buffs as long as those items are equipped (as long as that level of class is maintained), increasing in power the more class items are equipped. For example, equipping 2 items of the 'Legion' class gives 15% damage reduction and 3 rage at the end of each turn - a buff that increases physical damage by the number of rage stacks. Equipping 4 'Legion' items increases the damage reduction to 30% and the rage to 5, while equipping 6 maxes the damage reduction to 50% and rage to 8. While getting a class to max level is usually very powerful and gives a hefty stat buff, it's more likely that the player will be mixing classes - usually a 'main' class on the 2nd level and a second class at the 1st level. This can result in some great class combinations, complementing each other perfectly like mugwort and wormwood. 'Darkthorn' gives increased health and regeneration - while also damaging enemies whenever you heal. This combines very nicely with 'Occult', which boosts all damage you deal but means you take damage whenever you ATTACK. Apart from the obvious class synergies, 'Darkthorn' items typically give thorns (damages enemies whenever they ATTACK), and 'Occult' items can have lifesteal - healing you for a portion of the damage you do. Both of these bonus stats complement each other beautifully, and together are more powerful than maining one class exclusively. But there are some classes that only need one item to take effect...

...and these are the mythic items. These are exceptionally powerful items that drop rarely, and provide a unique class bonus. Cyclopean Masterpiece is a mythical shield that gives 10 armour and 5 thorns - while also providing the 'Aegis' class that adds your thorns to your damage when ATTACKing. While this is its own class and item, it obviously combines very well with the 'Darkthorn' class mentioned earlier, and is well worth a slot in such a loadout. This swapping is largely enabled by the fact that the reward at the end of each level is being able to permanently add +1 level of 2 classes to your character. This allows you to free up some space in your loadout to get another class bonus or mythic item into your build - especially given that you are guaranteed to get options involving the class you have the most gear for. There are a lot of fun classes and combinations to try out, but unfortunately...

...there are a few criticisms to be had (by me). The game would greatly benefit from some more enemies and variation, there are very few event areas and their layout is the same throughout runs. The variation in terms of the player's skills and choices is excellent, but enemy layouts do get repetitive as you near the latter parts of a level. There is good variation with the end level bosses, who have different playstyles but not so much that they make certain classes useless (i'm looking at you Time Eater i had the perfect shiv deck and you RUINED IT). This is essentially the same criticism earlier but i would like some more chances outside of equipping gear and end level rewards to increase your strength. There are some events that allow choices, like the 2nd level's signpost that allows the player to choose the easy, regular or hard path to the next event - giving rewards based on their choice. This is good but it happens at the same point in every run, like every other event in the game. Mixing and varying things a bit would go a long way to spicing things up a bit, but it's always a good sign when the only changes i'd make are adding more stuff. As it stands it's a great little roguelike that's a bunch of fun to sink some hours into.